Market abolitionism is a belief that the market, in the economic sense, should be completely eliminated from society. Market abolitionists argue that markets are morally abhorrent, antisocial and ultimately incompatible with human and environmental survival and that if left unchecked the market will annihilate both.

Contents

Michael Albert, creator of Znet and co-creator of participatory economics, considers himself a market abolitionist and favors democratic participatory planning as a replacement. He and several colleagues, including Robin Hahnel have elaborated their theory of "parecon" in books, on Znet, and in Z Magazine.

Notably, Noam Chomsky is one of those who have expressed the opinion that a truly free market (in the context of a sudden transition from the current system) would destroy the species as well as physical environment. He also favors a democratic participatory planning process as a replacement to the market.[1]

Economists such as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and Brink Lindsey argue that if the market is eliminated along with property, prices, and wages, then the mode of information transmission is eliminated and what will result is a highly inefficient system for transmitting the value, supply, demand, of goods, services, resources, along with an elimination of the most efficient mode of market transactions. Opinions as to what would follow range from the total collapse of civilization and mass starvation[5] to mere inefficient allocation.[6]

Market abolitionists may reply that whilst advocates of the Austrian school recognize equilibrium prices do not exist, they nonetheless claim that these prices can be used as a rational basis whilst this is not the case, hence markets are not efficient.[7][8]

"Contemporary" mutualists like Kevin Carson (as opposed to "classical" mutualists such Pierre-Joseph Proudhon) advocate a form of mutualism termed "Free Market Socialism" (which is not the same as Market Socialism) as an alternative to both Capitalism and State Socialism, noting that a decentralized system can be self-regulating.